Wedding and special events venue at Wyndridge Farm is expected to open Labor Day

Wyndridge Farm owners Steve and Julie Groff stand in what will be the tasting room of their Dallastown wedding venue and craft brewery. The Groffs produce hard cider and are expanding into craft beers, sodas and wine. The farm includes event space for weddings and other events. The venue will have its soft opening on Labor Day weekend. (Chris Dunn — Daily Record/Sunday News)

At Wyndridge Farm, on South Pleasant Avenue in Dallastown, owners Steve and Julie Groff are working on a major expansion of the 8,000-square-foot barn. The farm will eventually be a stop on the York County Convention & Visitors Bureau's Mason-Dixon Wine Trail and Susquehanna Ale Trail. (Chris Dunn — Daily Record/Sunday News)

Steve and Julie Groff have carved out a loyal following for their Wyndridge Crafty hard cider since launching the product last year.

Now, the husband-and-wife team is getting ready to open a wedding and special events venue on their 77-acre Dallastown farm. Once it opens on Labor Day, brides and grooms will be able to get married under the 28-foot ceiling of a restored 120-year-old barn -- and toast themselves with a glass of Wyndridge Crafty cider.

The plan is to make Wyndridge Farm into what Steve Groff calls "a craft beverage destination and special events venue" that will draw visitors from throughout the mid-Atlantic.

The wedding venue, the look of which Julie Groff described as "rustic elegance," is just part of a multimillion-dollar project on the South Pleasant Avenue farm. It also includes a 12,000-square-foot addition to the 8,000-square-foot barn that will house a brew house for making craft beer, a small retail shop, and a tasting room where guests will be able to sample Wyndridge's hard ciders and the craft beers and sodas the Groffs plan to roll out later this year.

They plan to start distributing two craft sodas -- an apple citrus soda and a cream soda -- later this month. That will be followed by the rollout in late September of two craft beers -- a golden, farm ale called Wyndridge 10 Point Ale and an India Pale Ale called Wyndridge Laughing Crow.

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"I'm very excited about the brand growing," said Steve Groff, an orthopaedic surgeon and the former president of OSS Health, who is working full-time on the Wyndridge Farm project. Groff declined to put an exact price tag on the project, but said it is more than $5 million. The couple financed the project from their own savings and a loan from Fulton Bank and the U.S. Small Business Administration, he said.

Newly-installed tanks are shown in the brewery area of Wyndridge Farm in Dallastown on July 31. (Chris Dunn — Daily Record/Sunday News)

The project, which took two years to plan and a year to build, generated between 100 and 200 construction jobs. The Groffs have hired 12 people, and the workforce is expected to eventually rise to as many 30 people.

The workforce includes some high-profile hires.

Matt Siegmund, the executive chef at The Oregon Grille in Baltimore County, Maryland, was brought on as Wyndridge Farm's executive chef, to oversee the catering menu and a small-plates menu at the farm's 70-seat tasting room.

Gord Slater, a 40-year brewing industry veteran, hired on as Wyndridge's head brewer. Slater, 66, earlier launched PEI Brewing Co. on Canada's Prince Edward Island. One of PEI's beers won a gold medal and another a silver medal at the Canadian Brewing Awards in 2012.

Wyndridge Farm is the kind of agricultural and manufacturing operation York County is looking to spotlight as a local tourist attraction, said Brent Burkey, a spokesman for the York County Convention & Visitors Bureau. The farm will be one of the stops on the CVB's Mason-Dixon Wine Trail and Susquehanna Ale Trail.

Despite the competition, Groff said bookings for weddings have been strong. Even before the venue's opening, Wyndridge has booked 25 weddings as far in the future as 2016, he said.

The Wyndridge name is about to become even better known. The company has a banner at Santander Stadium. And five Wyndridge billboards are scheduled to go up around York County in September.

Wyndridge Farm looking to grab a slice of growing market for hard cider

There is plenty of room to expand sales because the market is growing.

Hard cider sales at U.S. supermarkets, drugstores and mass market retailers totaled $290 million for the 52 weeks ending July 13, according to IRI, a Chicago-based research firm. That is a 90 percent increase from the year before.

The market is dominated by big players like Heineken USA's Strongbow; Smith & Forge Hard Cider, which is owned by a joint venture between Molson Coors and SABMiller; and Stella Artois Cidre, which is owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev.

Angry Orchard has the largest market share, at 56.5 percent, according to IRI. Angry Orchard is owned by Boston Beer Co., the maker of Samuel Adams beer.

Wyndridge's ciders have been strong sellers at The Wine Source, since the shop in Baltimore's trendy Hampden neighborhood began carrying them three or four months ago, said Jed Jenny, the assistant general manager. The shop plans to feature Wyndridge ciders at an in-store tasting in September.

"We have a lot of customers looking for new products, especially if they're local," Jenny said.

The cider also sells well at Beer Mongers, a bar and retail shop in Dallastown, owner Joshua Braun said. When Braun took it off tap a while back, strong demand from customers prompted him to return it.